Jacuzzi Moments with The Dragon Trip in Shanghai

Today we took the sight seeing tunnel to the oriental pearl tower. Later in the afternoon we headed to yu yuan gardens, nanging road, the river bund, the vue rooftop bar followed by KTV in the evening after dinner.

Oriental Pearl Tower

At the pearl tower we took the elevator that moved 400m per second up to the space module that sits at 351m. We climbed down to the sight seeing corridor at 259m that featured glass walls and a glass floor.

Yuyuan gardens

Built in the Ming dynasty, Yu is the Chinese name for happiness and Yuan translates as garden.

Although named a garden it’s actually a few streets that houses an enormous peace of jade. It remains a mystery how something so precious arrived in shanghai, but It is rumoured that it should have been transported to Beijing but the ship that was carrying it became ship wrecked and shanghai was the nearest city to transport it.

Nanging Road

Nanging road is a popular shopping street that sees 1 million people walk down it every day. It connects the people’s square to the river bund.

River Bund

Pu shee, or ku shee cant remember which, means the west side of the river. It is said that the British bought opium to trade and china became addicted to it, china attempted to ban opium resulting in the opium war for which china lost. As a result of this loss, the foreign powers forced the Chinese to sign an unfair treaty giving the British ownership of the land.

This is the most expensive area in the world and is home to a number of famous buildings.

First of all HSBC; for those that didn’t know HSBC is an acronym for Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation. The first ever HSBC lives on the River Bund and boasts the finest lobby in the eastern hemisphere. From my photos you’ll see this is the building with four flags on its top.

To the right of HSBC is the Custom House where imported goods where inspected. This building was designed by the same gentleman who designed Big Ben, and if bears uncanny resemblance.

Next is the Peace Hotel. When Chairman Mao died it was unknown who would take the power, the wife’s tale says that Chairman Mao’s wife and 3 other accomplices would meet in the Peace Hotel and plan how they would take over China. Evidently, they were unsuccessful in their attempts.

Now over to the Pudong, the east side of the river. Other than the Oriental Pearl Tower, the other building of interest is the bottle opener tower which is named this for obvious reasons.

The bottle opener tower was designed by a British Architect but to be built by the Japanese. You’ll see from the photos the hole is square shaped but original plans saw a circle shape, this changed when the Chinese said that is looked to much like the rising sun on the Japanese flag.

Unfortunately using blogger on my phone means I can’t put comments next to individual photos, so you’ll have to work out which is which from the photos.